Begun in 1918, this was one of three "Great Tales" of Middle-earth, which J.R.R. Tolkien worked on throughout his life, though he never saw it published. The saga of Húrin's daughter Niënor and his son Túrin—who would confront Morgoth, the evil precursor of Sauron, in an age long before Hobbits—had previously been known to fans only from tantalizing fragments in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Yet after 30 years' painstaking and intuitive effort, Tolkien's son and literary executor Christopher has spun a complete work from his father's many drafts, and one that rightly belongs in Tolkien's canon. This edition contains a two-color map drawn by the younger Tolkien, with eight color paintings and 25 pencil sketches by Alan Lee.

"Editor Christopher Tolkien has performed a remarkable feat, then, as cobbled together from untold abandoned efforts at completion by his father, the mortar matches the bricks nearly to perfection. And that is to say that it nods to the fullness of Tolkien's remarkably advanced history yet reads well and true in his hallmark heroically stilted prose. Welcome news indeed to untold throngs of readers to whom more Tolkien will invariably become beloved Tolkien."—Booklist